On Monday, Dr. John Graham-Pole remembered seeing all three in the seven-year-old boy who he once sat down and told that he would die of cancer.

“And there was this outpouring of grief — he, his family, two nurses and myself were all crying,” said the retired pediatric oncologist.

And when the wells of tears dried up that day at the University of Florida Health Shands Hospital in Gainsville, the boy looked around Graham’s office.

“And he peeked out from all his fear, anger and sadness and said, ‘Doctor, didn’t your mom ever teach you to clean up after yourself?’” remembered Graham-Pole.

“You see, he made that joke for us. Children suffering with cancer so often take it upon themselves to look after their own parents and the adults around them. We had a clown! And clowning is an art.”

A clown in the broken body of a boy who would never get to become a man.

So they treated his soul with art as his body failed him.

“Solemnity never cured anybody,” said Graham-Pole. “Forty years in medicine and bringing arts into the hospital was perhaps the most valuable part of my work.”

And Graham-Pole’s memories brought a moment of quiet to the boardroom at St. Martha’s Regional Hospital in Antigonish. With him to talk about a privately financed effort to bring artists into the hospital were Dr. Elizabeth Brennan, public health manager Jen Leuschner, music therapist Tom Curry and visual artist-clown Noella Murphy.

“Their worlds can become scary,” said Curry, of the patients at St. Martha’s with whom he has been working since November. “The arts can help take away the fright.”

While artists have long been a common sight in hospitals in the United Kingdom and the United States, they are only recently gaining a foothold in Canada. Particularly among health authorities, like those found in Nova Scotia, responsible for disparate rural populations and with budgets that barely cover the physical needs of their varied patients.

Brennan and the volunteers with Sustainable Antigonish were well aware of tight budgets through work advocating for the long-term housing, environmental and health needs of their community.

But as a longtime family doctor in Antigonish, Brennan also knew that you need to treat more than the body.

So last April, the group held its first arts and health symposium, bringing artists and health professionals together for a day of presentations and discussion on how they could work together.

Realizing the financial constraints of the Guysborough Antigonish Strait health authority, they got donations from the community to fund their pilot project at the hospital. Curry and Murphy, working with patients at the hospital, are the product of that effort.

“Music is stored in many compartments around the brain,” said Curry of working with those who have suffered a stroke.

“Music elicits memories that allow you to work around the damaged part of the brain to facilitate movement. … You can figure out how to activate a person’s speaking voice by first activating their singing voice.”

Murphy, who encourages patients in the visual arts, spoke about setting goals that become something to look forward to for people who are often locked in a battle for their own lives and dignity.

And for both artists, as with Brennan and Graham-Pole, working with the ill is a two-way street.

“We learn everything from out patients,” said Graham-Pole, who retired from his medical work in Florida to what has become a voluntary mission in Antigonish.

“When you work with children with cancer, you learn from them. … Children don’t take themselves as seriously as us adults and they can fly because of it.”

But the cold realities of money, remain for the community-led effort that is based in the hospital. Artists have to eat too, and the pilot project at St. Martha’s runs out of funding in March.

“From the beginning we haven’t expected government funding,” said Brennan. “We’re keeping at it. Writing grant proposals and knocking on doors.”

Brennan couldn’t help putting in a plug for those wanting to learn more about their initiative or donate to it. She points them toward www.artshealthantigonish.org.